Depeche Mode
Ultra

THE REVIEW

I apologize to all DeBaserians for my deep insistence on analyzing Depeche Mode and their works, at least those that I consider important and fundamental for understanding their musical biography.

"Ultra" is, along with "Songs Of Faith And Devotion," the album that encapsulates the essence of the dark period of the British band. But while "Devotion" is the "aperitif," "Ultra" is the "dessert," in short, the work that definitively closes that artistic direction taken since '87 with "Music For The Masses". The decade 87-97 is considered by many, including myself, as the creative apex of the Mode, the years of Personal Jesus and other finely crafted musical gems, especially when analyzed in light of the semi-tragic events that have shaken this musical formation.

But let's get to the point. 1997. Gahan, a long-time heavy user of drugs, the damned rocker of "Songs Of Faith And Devotion," is nearly killed by a fatal mix of drugs. He survives by a whisker, but his psyche is more than fragile; it's a jumble of confusion, unconsciousness, curse, illusion. Not only that. Alan Wilder, due to the treacherous artistic and image direction of Mode and Gahan's excesses, leaves a band on the brink of collapse. Everything seems to foreshadow the word "the end" to the breathtaking tale of Depeche Mode, yet once again the miracle happens. And the first phase of this miracle is "Ultra."

An extremely dark album, "Ultra" is a first attempt at recovery post-"Devotional", and indeed one can perceive in many of the 11 tracks still that rock sound that had characterized the previous work. But that exaggerated rock of "I Feel You" has vanished, giving way to much lighter and softer melodies, less angry, yet always rich with that theatrical and mysterious, dark atmosphere almost with a taste of curse. A striking example is the first track and first single, "Barrel Of A Gun," a musical summary of what Gahan was at the beginning of 1997, a fragile individual, psychologically unstable, almost morally impaired: his distorted voice, to the point of wanting to show the listener a damned world, combined with a semi-psychedelic rock sound (I apologize to readers for this definition), instills a sort of "terror," a "mystery". And the video created to accompany the song is the apotheosis of nothingness, of human fragility and individual psychosis, with Gahan crawling down a staircase, making soap bubbles in a bathtub, writing taken by madness, trembling and confused on a white billboard practically illegible phrases, wandering lost through a village.

A song I am particularly attached to is "It's No Good." It perhaps represents the most successful mix of rock and electronics achieved by the Mode, in which Gahan returns to his typical tone, less "desperate" and "angry," not distorted, pure, simple and direct, self-assured. The clip of "It's No Good" can also be conceived as the end of Dave Gahan's scruffy beard and long hair in the style of Kurt Cobain, a style he had inaugurated with "Devotion" and continued until the video of "Barrel Of A Gun." Now Gahan returns to being "orderly," less transgressive, a "back to the origins" in full compliance.

However, that power, that ancient vigor, that dynamism typical of "Violator," of "Devotion," seem to have disappeared in this album: electric guitar riffs, decisive and strong electronic bases and beats give way to less energetic sounds, in some cases languid, almost depressed, sad. This deprivation of energy is fully translated into The Love Thieves, Useless, Sister Of Night and Freestate. A sort of "almost" positivity is present only in the keyboards of The Love Thieves.

Being a not entirely convinced "Depechemodian," I dare say that only a few songs performed by Gore manage to hit me: "Home" is one of them, particularly intense and lyrical, nostalgic and melancholic but just right. A rarity, therefore, since Gore has only managed in very few other songs (such as, for example, Blue Dress, "Violator", 1990, ed.) to combine that his vocal tone tending to the acute with melodies that could adapt to it in a right and pleasant combination.

"Ultra" is the album of turning points: with this work, Depeche Mode inaugurate the positive trend of "instrumental tracks" (Uselink, Jazz Thieves and the final hidden track Junior Painkiller), which will continue with the following albums.

A very intimate album, rich in positive and negative facets, complex to listen to and consequently to understand. The end of an era, the beginning of a new one, a new dawn of creativity for Depeche Mode. Recommended to those who intend to immerse themselves 360° into the musical world of Mode without prejudices and with the conscious will to face a very complex period of their thirty-year biography.